Browsing: Board of Inspection and Survey

The sixth San Antonio-class ship completed its acceptance trials last week, and the Navy is sure hoping that the future USS San Diego can jump out of the gates after its December delivery without the problems that have plagued the rest of the class. Dock Landing Ship 22 has something going for it: It wasn’t built at Avondale, La. While all five previous 17s have had issues, one, the Mesa Verde, overcame its initial power plant problems and shock trial issues. The Pascagoula, Miss.-built ship is now on its second full deployment, replacing San Antonio, which had to stay home…

In case the 14-hour days of checks, inventories, walk-throughs and re-checks leading up to a Board of Inspection and Survey visit lead you to think dark thoughts, there’s help: a link to a suicide prevention hotline is front and center on the INSURV website. “Life is worth living,” it says. Clicking on the life ring redirects you to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline website. These suicide prevention links are common on Navy sites, appearing on most – if not all – official websites. But normally, this button is tucked in alongside other links to Navy.mil, Navy Freedom of Information Act,…

A year ago, the dock landing ship Oak Hill was in poor shape — and that’s by the Fleet Forces Command chief’s reckoning. Beginning in 2005, five deployments in five years, no time for maintenance and inadequate manning had left the relatively young ship with a degraded power plant, endemic corrosion and a whole lot of systems that just didn’t work. A long-overdue yard period, money, lots of outside help and long hours produced a remarkable turnaround Apr. 4-8, when the ship passed its rigid underway material inspection by the Board of Inspection and Survey with flying colors. Oak Hill…

The amphibious transport dock Mesa Verde left its Naval Station Norfolk pier at 9:05 Wednesday morning as the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group began deploying to the Med and the Libya crisis. As it pulled away, its wake gently lapped up against the starboard-side hull of San Antonio, moored at the next pier over, in what amounted to a love tap. Mesa Verde’s crew might have preferred delivering more of a kick in the rear. The third ship in the class, Mesa Verde had been home only eight months since its last overseas deployment, and it wasn’t supposed to deploy until…

It took the Navy just five tries to get it right the first time — at least, when it comes to San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ships. Naval Surface Force Atlantic announced Monday that the New York successfully completed its post-commissioning Final Contract Trials Feb. 4. CORRECTION: SURFLANT incorrectly first reported that the New York is the first of the five ships of the LPD-17 class to be certified for sustained combat operations on its first such evaluation. Rather, SURFLANT says, the ship produced the highest score during the FTC process of all previous San Antonio-class ships. The class has…